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2014 Advent: Nativity Displays

For years, there was a virtual advent tour going around the blog, 24 days of Christmas stuff at various spots. I don’t know what happened to it this year, whether I just missed signing up for it, or it doesn’t exist this year, but I realized this past week that it doesn’t feel like Christmas without a Christmas-y post on the blog.

I also realized that one of the things I haven’t shared here was my collection of nativities. Our church put on a huge nativity display this year, and while my collection isn’t the biggest or the fanciest or the coolest (there were some pretty neat ones I should have snapped pictures of), I’m still quite proud of it.

This one is the oldest one we own. I don’t know where my parents got it, but it was “mine” as a kid, and they actually gave it to me my freshman year of college, when I had bout of homesickness. I’ve been displaying it every year, ever since.

We do have a few international ones:

We didn’t pick this up in Ireland, but loved the stone, Celtic feel of it. The star is a Moravian star, which we picked up on one of our many trips to Pennsylvania.

This one we actually got in Rothenberg, Germany, when we went there on a day trip the summer of 1999. It gets used twice a year, once on story night, and once on Christmas Eve. Which is probably why it’s not turning as well as it used to.

This one we also got in Germany, when some diplomat friends of ours were going to Israel and asked if they could get anything for us. We said a nativity, and this is what the brought back. Yes, I do sense the irony of putting it up in front of the Game of Thrones books.

And this one my brother brought back from Venezuela for me. It usually sits high out of the kids’ reach at home, but I liked this arrangement so much, I think we need to figure out a way to do this at home as well.

This one, out of all of the displays, gets the most use. The girls, when they were younger, loved playing with it, rearranging the pieces, switching the hair on the wise men and shepherds. It’s gotten used for church, and sometimes I’m surprised the backdrop is still standing, or that the angel still has her wings (she lost her halo years ago, though.)

These next few we either just picked up at the store because we liked it, or were given to us.

In the “homemade” category, we have:

I made the ornament, as well as the picture frame above it.

This one was the handiwork of my sister-in-law.

And these, my mom made. I figured the best way to show them off was to put up our crazy nativity puppet play we do every year. It’s good for a laugh or three.